Academic health centers are increasingly willing to embrace, rather than rebuff, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. Indeed, in the last few years, "integrative" and "complementary" centers or programs have sprung up at dozens of academic health centers, and the trend will likely continue. But the frequency with which these newfound coalitions have taken place by no means implies that the melding of "conventional" and "alternative" medicines will be effortless. At a mid-November meeting in Philadelphia sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Penn's Center for Bioethics, and the National Institutes of Health Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 100 physicians, researchers, and ethicists came together to discuss the implications of incorporating complementary and alternative medicine into established academic health centers.
Alfred P. Fishman "Most institutions now, especially those that deal with women's health, aging, and cancer, feel a great pressure to provide unconventional therapies which will bring ...
